timo

I certainly have no clue about the point of this thread or the message you try to communicate. Keep in mind that most people reading this have not intensively read your other 40 posts and spent a lot of time thinking about your situation.

Technically, no one forces you to study all the time and get an A in every subject, right? Isn't is a bit off to complain about not having time for "creative thinking" when the reason you lack the time is because you decided to spend your time otherwise? That having said I of course understand that you'd prefer getting As for doing what you like, not what the school's evaluation scheme demands (I'm not being cynical here, I mean it). But I also believe that there is some common set of skills that everyone should have to some extend, irrespective of how uncreative they are. And I personally believe that testing these skills and common knowledge is a good thing, whereas testing "creative thinking beyond common knowledge" is impossible. Your spelling and especially your punctuation are quite "creative", for example. And I don't believe they are fit for a person that considers it important to note that his/her educational background is beyond middle school. To extend what EdEarl said: Keep in mind that what you learn in school is not everything you need to, for example, become a successful scientist. It is the bare minimum knowledge that everyone should have been exposed to (see the comment by ajb). Neither do you need to be perfect in it, nor does having an A in school math give a guarantee that you're ready to study math at university or even become a successful mathematician. I believe that if you enjoy building robots that play soccer then by all means you should build some in your free time. Even if that means you get a B in your biology class and won't get accepted into MIT (who probably much rather accept someone building soccer playing robots than a boring study-all-day kid, anyway).

Not sure about the school system in [wherever you come from]. But in many countries school takes roughly half of a student's awake time (guesstimated, taking into account weekends and holidays). Doesn't that leave plenty of room to "think about solutions to problems with a new way of unique thinking" on top of understanding the mainstream? For those genuinely interested in it, I mean.

I think the evidence is the large number of observations fitting the assumption, as probably discussed on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evidence , didn't read the actual article, though). The most interesting evidence I heard about was the Bullet Cluster observation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster).

Papers would be much more expensive if you also had to pay for the salaries of the scientists. Think of an average paper taking 1-2 person-years of work (not counting equipment) and being read by 10 people ... . It would be interesting if goverments forced scientists paid by them to publish their results as free access, though. Btw.: Google scholar gave me this link: http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Armstrong-Sandberg-Eternity-in-six-hours-intergalactic-spreading-of-intelligent-life-and-sharpening-the-Fermi-paradox.pdf Perhaps you can access that (I can, but my Internet connection may or may not have journal access extras).

Why do people not listening, paying attention, understanding or agreeing to your point of view frustrate you in the first place? "You" not necessarily meaning EdEarl but anyone who feels this kind of frustration (the many debates about crackpots indicate this is a common phenomenon). It's not that we are talking about politics where people's opinions have an actual effect. The question isn't meant as being cynical, btw. I sometimes tend to be a bit frustrated, myself. And I couldn't really put my finger on the "why". It's certainly not that I feel responsible for correcting wrong things other people claim on the Internet. And I would be lying if I claimed that I want to help poor crackpot souls. It may be the childishness of some of the claims that makes me connect - and then become frustrated because the child-me doesn't understand what the adult-me is saying. Or in other words: The irritation caused by being put back into a situation where you have been without being able to move into the direction you believe to be the correct one. On the question: You should probably not spend too much time doing things that frustrate you.

Well, call me irrational: But in my mind I can well imagine that a swinging pendulum, a system whose dynamics is driven by the interplay of gravitational force an inertia, is affected by a change in gravitational force. Anyways: I believe our views on how a pendulum works are quite different, and that neither of us would benefit if I continued to contribute to this thread.

I am not sure I really understand what you mean by that. General Relativity is a theory of gravity - and widely believed to be the most accurate one that we currently have, in fact. It actually does predict a change in gravitational effect ("force") as a result of distance from earth.

I think the jump from realizing that a pendulum doesn't work without gravity to the conclusion that relativity was flawed is a bit over-ambitious. Especially if "relativity" is supposed to mean as "relativity according to an average physicist's understanding", not as "relativity according to your understanding". Precision was not the only reason why the original experiment used atomic clocks rather than sundials. You can measure process of time by growth of bacteria cultures and then claim that lower temperatures cause slower passing of time. But most people will still take the stance that lower temperature slows down bacteria growth.

Given I have (supposedly) no rights on others' contributions: How much of a post of mine in which I cite someone or refer to their postings would I be allowed to sell to become rich and famous? All of the words typed by me but not the text I referred to/quoted?

Let me illustrate with a single example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_solution

A "vacuum solution" is the solution to a differential equation in the case that there are no objects (more precisely: no objects relevant for the particular differential equation) in the region (note that there may be objects outside the region, as in this case), i.e. the solution in a vacuum (sub-) volume. huh?

Not sure what "gab" is supposed to be, but what you posted seems like a single entry of the Schwarzschild metric, at best. The Schwarzschild metric is a tensor (written in particular coordinates), and some of its entries do depend on the mass.

I won't be able to actually answer the question, but perhaps that still helps: The only time I encountered wormholes was in the context of black holes (and a brief glance at Wikipedia tells me this is indeed at least the historical way): If you extend the Schwarzschild solution (-> math. expression) to Kruskal Coordinates (-> math. expression) then the Schwarzschild scenario extends from an exterior and a black hole region to (1) an exterior, (2) a black hole region, (3) a white hole region and (4) another exterior. The idea now is that (4) is not new but the same spacetime. Furthermore, there is a contact point between (1) and (4) which is assumed to be different point of spacetime in both cases - i.e. if you could go through that contact point you'd have found a shortcut or even a sort of time-travel. Problem is that this single point does not allow anything to pass through (not exactly sure why but I believe that (a) single points mean zero connection interface and (b) an object approaching the connection disturbs spacetime such that the connection breaks down). To make widen this connection point and allow passage, one can play to add matter with exotic properties. But there is a lot of hocus pocus involved in the whole issue. Short version: I cannot answer the question. But (a) the notion of "a wormhole equation" sounds a bit naive, and (b) my suggestion is to start at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruskal%E2%80%93Szekeres_coordinates

Swansont's answer is exactly what I would imagine the term to mean. But as the response to it shows, this is not clarifying the confusion about it. So let me try to explain: The process in question is the gravitational interaction of two bodies deflecting each others' path (with the effect on earth probably being ignored for being tiny). Of interest are the values before and after the process, i.e. the total effect. The semantic problem one encounters is that strictly speaking gravity has an infinite range, so the deflection process never starts nor ends. So for pedants (like the average Wikipedia author ) the value of interest is the value's limit as the process approaches an infinite distance between the two bodies. Or in short-hand: The value at infinity (although a proper pedant like me would cry foul over phrasing it like this ). In practice, it is the value at a point where the process can be considered as having finished. Or to put it into Swansont's words: A point "where the earth's influence can be ignored".

I did in fact mention the term "geodesic equation" on purpose. Google it, look it up on Wikipedia, check this this text (eq. 31), ... .

Not "+1" but "<thumb up> like"

To the question in the headline: I did my MSc in elementary particle physics and my PhD in complex systems. That is, I did my MSc and PhD in formally completely different fields of interest treated by somewhat different physics, but yet with some overlap between the two jobs: both was in a theoretical physics department, both did include lots of programming and data analysis (admittedly, the analysis part in my MSc was rather limited due to bad performance of mine). That may be similar to going from genetics to immunology (which for an ignorant physicist like me is both just "molecular biology"). To the question you actually asked: That depends on you and the other applicants. If you are a great student with top grades from a renowned university and all the Immunology applicants are students who barely made their degree and cannot even explain their MSc project in a job interview (rumors are I got my PhD position because the in-field, top-grade Chinese applicant gave a talk that became infamous for "worst talk ever attended" amongst my later colleagues - my later supervisor thereafter restrained from inviting any of the many other Chinese applicants and hired me, instead) then your chances are great. If you are the skill-less applying for a highly competitive field with lots of good students, then chances are obviously slim. So after stating the obvious, I'll add another statement that just as obvious: The best way to find out is to actually apply. Not much to lose in doing so, after all.

What you actually calculate from a given state of an object (position and velocity) and a known spacetime structure is the acceleration on the object. The relevant equation is called the "geodesic equation". The concept of forces as in "F=ma" is mostly used in non-relativistic, non-QM physics.

The parameters should be described in the manual of the program you are using.

Hi Ghostofshade, the relations of surfaces going with the 2nd power of a scaling parameter and 3D-volumes going with the 3rd power (and N-dimensional volumes going with the N'th power) are purely mathematical in nature and scale-free. That means: - It holds for 20-feet humanoids as well as for 60-feet humanoids, as well as for 6000-feet humanoids. - It even holds the other way round: If the linear size of an object is reduced by half (in every direction), the volume is reduced to 1/8. - Being the mathematically correct scaling does not imply that the result makes sense biologically: Scaling up a seagull by a linear factor of four will result in a giant seagull that is probably unable to fly (weight goes up by a factor 4³ = 64 while wing area only goes up by a factor of 4²=16 - and that's without considering the factor of physical strength). Similarly, applying the mathematically correct scaling to a humanoid still does not guarantee the result makes sense biologically. Btw.: I didn't check your numbers.

For me, the "=" means "equal" in the sense of "identical" or "the same", not "balanced". Additionally, I wouldn't equate the term "calculation" with "equation", either. You are certainly right that equal things must be equal for an equality statement to be true. My questions was if "balanced" really is common/proper/correct terminology to use in this case.

Is it universally agreed upon that a "balanced calculation" means that two sides of an equation are equal? Just asking because I have no idea what a "balanced calculation" is supposed to be (Swansont's reply gives a hint, but I think it was merely an attempt to make sense of the OP).

One of the not-so-well-known features of relativity is the paradoxical situation that to make statements about the structure of space time you have to make quite some assumptions about the structure of space time in advance. The assumptions/conditions for the Schwarzschild geometry and the cosmological models have significant differences and, in my opinion, don't compare well (or at all). Despite the mysterious word "singularity" appearing in both scenarios. One case assumes a time-invariant spacially located distribution of mass with surrounding vacuum and asymptotic Minkowski space, the other one a homogeneous non-locaed distribution of mass with no such thing as a surrounding.

Mesons are often described as a bound state of a quark and an anti-quark. None of them are stable, though.